Film Review: Theories on the Origin of Life

The creation-evolution controversy was returning as a hot political and
educational issue when this film was made a dozen years ago. Today the issue is
hotter yet with creationists demanding "equal time" in the classroom. As a
result, this film continues to look tempting to teachers seeking out a competent
comparison of theories that would objectively demonstrate the superiority of
evolution on the basis of evidence, logic, and theory. I certainly had trouble
booking it.

Since most teachers would consider a creationist-produced film suspect because
of its prejudiced source and since creationists logically reject many standard
scientific presentations on the same grounds, a commercial film might be able to
solve the dilemma-or at least satisfy a teacher that it tries to be fair. This
film does not.

Striving vaguely to be objective and inoffensive, it succeeds only in being
superficial. It clearly favors evolution, but the only reason a viewer would be
convinced to agree is because the producers are known to be trustworthy. Divine
creation, evolution, spontaneous generation, and cosmogenesis are the four
theories examined. Creation is treated in a simple manner by briefly showing
Michaelangelo's version and by noting that people have believed it. An
outerspace origin of life via "spores" blown to earth or carried by meteors is
duly noted as unproven. Evolution is said to be based on fossil evidence (but
not explained at all), and 1953 Stanley Miller experiments are shown passing
electricity through the chemicals of early earth history to produce amino acids.
Only spontaneous generation is treated in detail. Maggots are shown to come from
flies, and microorganisms from airborne contamination produce living cultures in
a recreation of Pasteur's famous experiment.

Unless one needs to illustrate the weakness of spontaneous generation, this film
is of little use. Portentious music and a ponderous narration that sounds like
Orson Welles on a bad day further contribute to the film's inadequacy. It is
best, therefore, that college and high school teachers seeking to deal
effectively with the creation-evolution controversy avoid this item.